The Mountaintop
There is no mountain top. There is no end.
I used to think when I was young(er), that there would be this point where I would be “all set.” I didn’t mean this in a monetary sense, though that was a small part of it, but it was more of a sense of having arrived. Arrived in myself, in my career, in my emotional life, in my relationships, the idea encompassed a lot of things. For me it was an age. I thought by age X, I would have some things figured out. For my cousin, who once told me in an unrelated conversation that links up perfectly with this idea, it was a dollar amount. For others I am sure it is some other milestone.
I am not sure if this is some sort of innate human survival thing, but my guess is that it is really a cultural / socialization thing. In a lot of ways, we never feel like we are enough as we are, we are not whole as we are, so we think that there is some point, or feat, or accomplishment outside of ourselves that will finally let us arrive in ourselves in wholeness. And it seems this is not reserved for certain people of our society. This even extends to the perceived most “accomplished” among us. Look at the tech billionaires. Society has deemed their feats to be rewarded with grandiose wealth for their work and visions. And yet, they still, in their own words (many of them), want what they call FU money. Imagine that. Imagine being on that perceived mountain top and still needing (or wanting) to say FU to anyone. Why are they not, instead, creating things, and contributing to a world, or making a society a place where no one NEEDS to do that. Where no one needs to say FU to anyone. Because let’s be honest, that is really about some unmet need from their life that they haven’t yet healed. It may be guised as a part of tech culture, “that’s just what we do,” “it’s acceptable,” instead of really looking at it and why that is even a thing or even needed. Why their perceived mountaintop is so unsatisfying to them? Because they still have to be human in this life.
The funny thing I’ve realized about mountaintops is that even if you get up there, you still have to come down, and then you still have to climb another. There isn’t one mountain, there are thousands. You may elevate, then descend, and then elevate again millions of times in your life, both in the physical world and the spiritual world. It is infinite.
I once went trekking in Nepal in the Himalayas. I got sick on the trek, then got dehydrated, and I was pretty sure (in my mind) that at some point I was going to give up and need to get helicoptered out. And yet, still I climbed. I did get to physical mountaintop (and to be honest for the Himalayas not even a very high one), but then I had to come down. Coming down was even more challenging for me than the climb up. My body, ragged from the days elevating, struggled to descend. Each step I took became a mantra. Survival was the only thing in my mind. I often thought during that time, maybe I should have just stayed up there for a while and come back with another group. But that’s the whole point, the highs, the elevation points, the mountaintops, they are fleeting. Life is still there. Being human is still there. We still have to hold all the aspects of being human and what the human experience encompasses. All the highs, all the lows, all the in-betweens (so many in-betweens).
That brings me back to the metaphorical mountaintop. I realized the year after I reached X age, that this place of arriving doesn’t exist. This was part revelation because of the nature of my practices and what they have taught me, and part lived experience. The year after this age passed (one that I had honestly looked forward to) the sharp relief of the on-going, evolving, changing, nature of life hit me. I looked at my own experience, I looked at the experience of those around me, and I saw us all swimming in the illusion of arriving. I saw fleeting moments of bliss. I saw fleeting moments of staggering pain. I saw fleeting moments of neutrality. I saw fleeting moments of just being. But most of all, I saw us all being human over and over again. Living with all of it.
Releasing the need to arrive has been liberating for me. It doesn’t mean I don’t have goals and things I want to do, or am called to do, but it does mean that I know those things are not going to release me from the everyday parts of being human. There is no point at which I will arrive where I can just rest on my laurels. There is no point at which I will stop learning and growing in this life. What I do know is that releasing this idea, this limiting belief, freed me. It allowed me more ease to be with my life. It allowed more ease for me to be with me. It allowed more fluidity in my practices. And most of all, it allowed me to recognize that my full worth will always come from the inside out and not the other way around. I was and always had been whole.
For me there is no longer a mountaintop in my mind. I know the highs and lows will always exist. I know that some of them will get easier and some of them will get harder. Some will be undefined, existing outside of the language we possess. I know that how I choose to be with them is entirely up to me and how I practice. So I practice. Again and again. I evolve, again and again.
I know that there is no end to the ways I have and will learn my own wholeness, again and again, through every aspect of being human. So I settle in and travel the journey that never ends.
Is there a mountaintop for you? What stories to do you tell yourself about your own mountaintops? Notice your “I’ll be good when…” “I’ll be all set when…” statements to yourself. They will set you on the path of story discovery.
